## Overview

The **interaction mode** answers a single question: **does this bot talk to the contact?**

There are **two modes**:

- **Talks to the contact** (default) — the bot works as usual: it reads, reasons, uses its tools and
  **replies** to the contact on the channel.
- **Silent** — the bot **sends the contact nothing**. It keeps reading the conversation, reasoning
  and using the tools you enabled, but everything it produces becomes a **private note** for the
  team. A person is the one who answers the customer.

> Do not confuse this with **autonomy**. Autonomy is **how much** the bot decides on its own.
> Interaction mode is **whether** what it produces reaches the contact. They are independent: a bot
> can be silent and still run on autopilot to act behind the scenes.

Silent is not "a bot that feels less like talking" — it is **structurally unable** to send. The
contact-facing tools are **never handed to the model**, and if the model invents one of their names,
execution is **refused**. The lock exists in both places on purpose: a lock only the model respects
is not a lock.

## Prerequisites

- **Maestro enabled** and a configured bot.
- **Administrator** permission to change the bot's configuration.
- **A human team working the inbox** — in silent mode nobody answers the contact until a person does.

## Step by step

1. Open the bot's configuration.
2. Go to **Interaction mode** (right below **Autonomy**).
3. Choose **Silent — private notes only**.
4. Read the warning that appears: it states exactly what stops happening.
5. **Save**. From then on, that bot sends the contact nothing.

To reverse it, choose **Talks to the contact** and save — the bot resumes immediately, with every
other setting intact.

## Settings & options

| Mode | What the contact receives | Where the bot's output shows up |
|------|---------------------------|---------------------------------|
| **Talks to the contact** (default) | The bot's replies, on the channel | In the conversation, as a message |
| **Silent** | **Nothing** | As a **private note** for the team |

### What keeps working in silent mode

- **Reading the conversation**, summary and memory.
- **Internal tools**: CRM, calendar, catalog, knowledge base, database, web search, labelling,
  creating tasks, recording contact attributes.
- **Private notes** — this is how the bot's work reaches the team.
- **Autonomy and human approval** still govern the actions it performs.

### What stops happening

- **No message to the contact**, on any channel.
- **No "typing…" indicator** — announcing typing would promise a message that provably cannot arrive.
- **No read receipts.** This is where silent is **stricter** than Copilot: an observing bot stamping
  every inbound message as read the moment it lands takes the receipt out of the human agent's hands
  and manufactures the worst possible reading for a customer — **seen, and ignored**.

### Silent vs Copilot

Both stop the bot from sending on its own, by different routes:

| | **Copilot** | **Silent** |
|---|---|---|
| How the suggestion arrives | A draft card for you to **review and send** | A **private note** with what it found |
| Does the draft become a message? | Yes, with one click from you | There is no draft to send |
| Marks as read | Yes | **No** |

Pick **Copilot** when you want to speed up the human reply. Pick **Silent** when you want the bot
**working alongside** a team that owns the conversation.

## Use cases

- **Audit and quality** — the bot follows conversations and leaves notes about risk, promises made
  and open items, without ever surfacing to the customer.
- **Quiet enrichment** — it queries the CRM and the knowledge base, records contact attributes and
  labels the conversation while the human agent talks.
- **Risk-free pilot** — run the bot silent on a real inbox for a few days and read the notes to
  judge its quality **before** letting it speak.
- **Sensitive channel** — legal, collections or healthcare, where the answer to the customer is
  always human but the preparation can be automatic.

## Tips, limits & best practices

- **Silent is per bot**, not per conversation: it applies to every inbox that bot serves.
- If the bot goes silent and **nobody is working the inbox**, the contact gets no answer at all.
  Confirm someone is on the other side.
- Use silent as a **trust ladder**: Silent → Copilot → Hybrid → Autopilot.
- Tools that **act** (create a deal, book, charge) keep acting. If you want observation only, review
  the enabled tools as well.
- An unknown value in the field (say, from an API edit) is read as **Talks to the contact**: if this
  setting fails, it fails towards continuing to serve.

## Troubleshooting

- **"The bot stopped replying out of nowhere"** — check the **Interaction mode**. If it is
  **Silent**, that is the expected behaviour.
- **"Notes appear but the customer receives nothing"** — that is exactly silent mode working. Switch
  to **Talks to the contact** if you want customer replies.
- **"The customer says the message was seen and ignored"** — in silent mode the bot does **not** mark
  as read; check whether the receipt came from an agent's app.
- **"I asked the bot to send a message and it refused"** — in silent mode the sending tools do not
  exist for it, and execution is refused even if the model tries.
- **"I want silence in this conversation only"** — use **Pause the bot** on that conversation; the
  interaction mode covers the whole bot.

## See also

- [What Maestro AI and the Account Brain are](/hc/ajuda/articles/maestro-brain-overview-en)
- [Bot autonomy modes and human approval (HITL)](/hc/ajuda/articles/maestro-brain-autonomia-e-aprovacao-humana-en)
- [Generative copilot: propose, confirm and execute](/hc/ajuda/articles/maestro-brain-copiloto-generativo-en)
- [Maestro tools by module](/hc/ajuda/articles/maestro-brain-ferramentas-maestro-por-modulo-en)
- [Where each bot is used](/hc/ajuda/articles/maestro-brain-onde-cada-robo-e-usado-en)